Bill, Hillary Clinton are grandparents: Chelsea gives birth to a girl

Chelsea Clinton

Andrew Gombert / European Pressphoto Agency

Chelsea Clinton participates in a No Ceilings initiative event in April sponsored by the Clinton Foundation at the Lower Eastside Girls Club in New York. On Friday, she gave birth to her first child, Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky.

Chelsea Clinton participates in a No Ceilings initiative event in April sponsored by the Clinton Foundation at the Lower Eastside Girls Club in New York. On Friday, she gave birth to her first child, Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky. (Andrew Gombert / European Pressphoto Agency)

Bill and Hillary Clinton become grandparents as Chelsea Clinton delivers her baby in New York

After much public anticipation, Bill and Hillary Clinton have finally become grandparents as their daughter, Chelsea, gave birth to a daughter Friday.

The former president and the past--and perhaps future--presidential candidate delivered the news via Twitter, copying a post from their daughter referring to the birth.

"Marc and I are full of love, awe and gratitude as we celebrate the birth of our daughter, Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky," read the post on Chelsea Clinton's Twitter feed.

No other details were made public.

Coming as her mother makes plans for a second presidential campaign, the news that Chelsea Clinton and her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, were expecting their first child garnered tremendous attention in the political world — leading some to compare it to the frenzy that surrounded the arrival of Prince William and Kate Middleton’s son, George.

“I just hope that I will be as good a mom to my child — hopefully children — as my mom was to me,” Chelsea Clinton said at the event for the foundation’s No Ceilings initiative, which is focused on helping young women and girls.

Chelsea Clinton, who is 34, has taken a leading role in the expansion of her family’s foundation, serving as vice chairwoman with a special focus on the foundation’s health programs. She recently helped orchestrate the foundation’s airlift of 100 tons of medical supplies to West Africa to help in the fight against the Ebola virus. She also leads the No Ceilings initiative with her mother.

At the 10th annual Clinton Global Initiative gathering in New York on Tuesday, Chelsea moderated a panel on “valuing what matters” with General Motors Chief Executive Mary Barra, Alibaba Group Executive Chairman Jack Ma, Ford Foundation President Darren Walker and Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

Until late August, Chelsea Clinton held a part-time job as a special correspondent at NBC News; her hiring and high compensation raised questions about whether the network was trying to curry favor with her family. But she announced on her Facebook page that she was leaving to focus on her foundation work and the birth of her child.

She worked at the consultant firm McKinsey & Co. and at Avenue Capital before taking a full-time role at the Clinton Foundation.

Hillary Clinton has stoked much of the discussion surrounding Chelsea this year by repeatedly mentioning her excitement about becoming a grandmother. The openness with which she talked of the coming event contrasted with the privacy the Clintons had sought for their daughter while she was younger.

The former secretary of State, who is among the most closely watched politicians in America, has also tied the baby’s arrival to her own political ambitions — stating that she wants to experience being a grandmother before she makes a final decision on a presidential run. But she has also hinted that the family news has given her new reasons to pursue the presidency again.

During a Democratic conference in mid-September, Clinton said that being on “grandbaby watch” had led her to think more deeply about her hopes for other children in America: “I want every one of our children to feel that they are inheriting the best of America,” she said.

At Sen. Tom Harkin’s steak fry in Iowa earlier in September, Hillary Clinton warned the crowd that she and her husband planned to drop everything as soon as the baby came: “If you see us sprinting offstage, that’s why,” she said.

The Clintons did not reveal their daughter’s due date, but Bill Clinton recently appeared to let it slip during an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.

“I can't wait,” he told Zakaria. “I hope by the first of October, I'll be a grandfather.”